


Captain America is not Your Excuse to be a Douchebag

by theoneandonlybunny



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Discussion of Abortion, Frank Discussion of Racism/Sexism/Homophobia/Islamophobia, LGBT rights, This is not the Captain America people thought they were getting, This is not your conservative right-wing Captain, but rather they will be included as examples of attitudes, that are or have been at least somewhat prevalent, there will occasionally be slurs in here and you should know that, they will never be used in the pretense that they are acceptable things to call people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 01:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoneandonlybunny/pseuds/theoneandonlybunny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When people look at Steve, they often see their own expectations more than they see him. So when he goes on a talk show to discuss Pearl Harbor and its similarities to 9/11, many are surprised to discover that he is not the Popular Perfect American that  so many have painted him as over the years. But once they've gotten him started, he can't stop, and now he has to fight the war of saving America from its own bigoted, backwards elements. The country he loves has come far since 1945, but in many areas, it just hasn't come far enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Racism Still Stinks 70 Years Later

The popular press in 1942 had never been for the Japanese-Americans; it was too easy to hate them, too easy to make them other, and considering that there was a war going on and good men were being sent to fight and die fighting Japanese soldiers, maybe it was best for everyone to be able to think of the other side as monsters who didn't have people to come home to. That was what Steve told himself as he read the headlines splashed on the front page of the Daily Bugle, and no other paper seemed to be taking any other line. But as Steve read the letters to the editor at the back, he did find others, and the discomfort he had been feeling blossomed and grew as he read other reactions to the announcement of Executive Order 9066. 

Some were outright hatred. Some were vile, low comments, about how the Japanese-Americans should all be killed, since they were all potential spies for the enemy, and how there was no other way to make sure everyone else stayed safe.

But there was one, a letter from a housewife whose sister had married a Japanese-American man, and she recounted how her sister had written her that the woman's nieces and nephews were facing extreme violence in the forms of rocks and being jumped at school and social exclusion, and Steve suddenly had the urge to protect these children from the rage that had swept the country since the attack on Pearl Harbor. He kept reading, and the housewife's brother in law was facing internment, even though he'd never set foot in Japan in his life. Her sister feared for his safety, and mentioned how money had been getting increasingly tighter and tighter, since no one would shop at a general store owned by a 'Jap'.

Steve put the paper down and felt sick. His joints were flaring today, and he was down to his last few sheets of paper -- he kept drawing all over them -- but he needed to speak out against this, and the only way he knew how to do that in his current condition was to write letters. One for the editor of the Daily Bugle, one for the editor of the New York Times (which had run a similar article that same day), one for the Representative he'd voted for in the last election, and one to the Senator.

Maybe hatred was needed in battle, maybe for some, but that didn't mean they had to legalize it here at home and make children suffer.

\---

Steve sat in a chair in front of a camera 70 -- or maybe just four -- years later. He'd gone to war since the time he wrote those letters, heard the anger in Jim Morita's voice as he spoke about what his father was being subjected to over on the West Coast, and he remembered that as he was reminded of the fact that he was being called in to speak on the similarities of Pearl Harbor to the attack everyone called 9/11. In truth, that had been one of the first things Steve had been brought up to speed on, the military history that had happened while Steve was taking an ice-nap, and he'd been quietly dismayed that he'd woken up during a time when America was at war again. He'd hoped that after the Great War (which he still called World War 1 in his head, it was a habit he couldn't drop) and the lessons learned in the Pacific and the European Theaters, they'd have figured a way to settle conflicts without the massive loss of lives.

The host of the show sat down on the other side of the very expensive, very polished wooden desk, and offered Steve a bottle of water that had been very pricey when Steve had last gone to the market. The host had a cup of coffee for himself, and as the other man took a sip, a makeup artist came over with a bit of powder and a comb. The signal was given for the show to begin airing in a minute, and the makeup artist hurried off the set.

The host turned to Steve and gave him an entirely-too-white smile, and something in Steve's stomach churned.

The talk started out just fine. There was another man -- older, visibly most of the way through balding, didn't appear to have had a very nice life -- who joined them through a screen, and at first, they stayed to what Pearl Harbor was like and how America reacted and the facts about it. About how many had died that day. About how it had shaken the core of America, and what civilian life was like during that time. That much Steve could talk about easily.

Then the conversation had shifted to 9/11, and the talks took a much darker tone. There was a brief summary of 9/11, and a clip shown of the second plane flying into the South Tower, and then the host opened his mouth.

"That just shows it, folks. Not all Muslims are terrorist, but since that attack, all terrorists have been Muslims."

A muscle twitched in Steve's jaw as he heard that. The older man began to back up the host's comments, but Steve turned his head so that he was just looking at the host, and in a firm, restrained voice, he asked, "Excuse me?"

The host seemed honestly puzzled that Steve would disagree.

"Yeah. All of the terrorists have been Muslims. Honest Americans have the right to ask Muslims to prove they aren't terrorists, because you know, all of them could be the ones with the bombs under their clothing. It's just being practical."

Jim Morita. The housewife's sister. The hundreds of thousands of people in the internment camps in the West Coast, all of whom were there simply because of an accident of birth. Because of a shared cultural heritage.

"No."

The older man turned to Steve. "What do you mean, no?"

"I mean, that's wrong. They don't have to do that. They shouldn't. There's no patriot test that should determine whether or not people get to not have their lives discriminated against or examined. Last time I checked, that was illegal." Steve was speaking in a clear, strong voice, and the anger was growing in the pit of his stomach. "Terrorist is someone who inflicts fear on a mass scale, right? Big man like you in a fancy set-up like this, telling people that they should watch a certain group of people with fear and anger and judgment because of who they worship -- no, not even that, it's their skin color and their culture, because you probably wouldn't ask me to prove where my allegiance was if I worshiped like they do -- well, that would probably make a lot of good people afraid of you and the effects of your words. You're a terrorist to them."

There was a moment of silence as the words sank in, and before anyone had recovered their wits, Steve went grabbing for the mike attached to his suit.

"I'm done here," he said, still fuming, and walked off the set.

The same shit was still being pulled, even after all this time, and this time he wasn't just gonna write letters about it. He had more power now, more pull, and dammit, he was going to do something with it.


	2. Shock Jockeys Make Everything Worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve finds support for what happened on-air, but he's still not entirely sure what happened. As it turns out, he's not the only one.

Within five minutes, his walk-off had blown up YouTube and the news stations. He'd made his way out of the building -- he was feeling disgusted and angry, they'd clearly been expecting him to go along with it and he didn't have any reason why -- and found Natasha waiting there at the curb, in a car.

"Been waiting here long?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Natasha looked down at the car display, and then pulled out her phone to call someone. 

"Barton. You and Stark both owe me $50."

Her lips curled up into a smile, and Steve could hear a muffled curse coming through the phone just before Natasha put it away. She opened the car door, and Steve got in quickly.

"You guys had a bet on how long I would last in there?"

Natasha started the car, and started into New York City traffic.

"Those guys are infamous for being assholes. Forget what they did to us after Loki, they've made their careers on saying whatever sounded the worst. It started on radio, but it moved to TV as well. It's a whole genre."

Steve frowned.

"So... what do they usually focus on?" 

The way those guys had started speaking about the 'terrorists', the two men were used to saying anything they damn well pleased on the subject. Steve was starting to get a bad feeling.

Natasha signaled to join another lane, and it seemed like her driving was perfectly suited to New York's style of traffic, because she squeezed into a gap in the lines of cars that Steve had seen a taxi car pass up.

"Anything and everything, Cap. I mean that quite literally." She paused at a traffic light, and turned to look at Steve. "From what I hear, they've even declared the World Cup a conspiracy against America."

Steve blinked.

"You're kidding me, right?"

The light changed, and Natasha shifted gears.

"I wish I was."

\---

When Steve got back to the Tower, he was ambushed by teammates. Tony was there, clapping him on the back and congratulating him, and Clint giving him a thumbs up, and from what Steve could see, the footage of him on the TV show was still being played (or possibly re-played) on the back wall, where it was being projected. Bruce, still slightly at the outside of the group, hung back, while Thor did similarly, if on a different side.

"That. Was. Awesome."

Steve blinked, and looked back at Tony, who was wearing the largest shit-eating grin he'd ever seen on the billionaire.

"Uhh, thanks?"

Natasha got out of the elevator behind him, and immediately went to the couch nearest to the TV.

"Romanoff, haven't you seen it yet?"

"Nope," she tossed back to Tony. "He shut down YouTube. I couldn't get it to come up on my phone."

This seemed to put Tony in an even better mood, if that was possible.

"Here, hang on -- it's on a loop, so if you just wait a bit --- right now it's while they're all talking about World War 2, but they'll move on the 9/11 part in about 30 seconds..."

Steve rolled his eyes, and the team watched (for some, the third or fourth time) as he'd gotten well and truly pissed off on camera. When the clip was done, Natasha leaned back, a predatory grin on her face.

"Well done, Rogers." The compliment felt weird -- not that she was complimenting him, just in the way that he felt he didn't understand why he was getting complimented. "Pay up, losers."

Clint and Tony fished for their pockets. Clint pulled out a wallet, and Tony pulled out his phone.

"Can I just send it to whichever account you were using when you were pretending to be Natalie Rushman and my/Pepper's assistant? Or was there some sort of agreement where we didn't actually pay you?"

"I got paid for my time," Natasha said cooly, accepting the $50 from Clint. "You can send it there."

Steve blinked, and filed that away as a story he needed to hear some other time.

Thor cleared his throat from where he'd been standing.

"As amusing as this has been, I fear I do not understand it well enough," he began. "Were those men villainous? They did not speak words of peace."

"They're a pain in the ass, that's what they are," Bruce grumbled. "Bet -- a colleague and I were still working on our PhDs in 2001, when these guys had just won the White House and Congress back for the GOP. You know how hard it got in the labs, when suddenly you couldn't order certain materials for fear of being put on the terrorist watch list? My PhD's in physics, that was mostly okay, but she was pissed when she had to stop using a reagent essential to her work because no one wanted to order anymore and risk it. Kept talking about it for years."

Steve's eyebrows climbed higher on his head as Thor turned to Bruce.

"Sorry? What does a white house have to do with anything? Or a formal meeting? I understand less and less."

"Sorry, buddy," Clint said, shrugging. "The White House is where the leader and his family lives, and where a lot of his staff work. Congress is what we call the people who get together to make laws."

"The leader does not make the laws?" Thor looked even more puzzled. "Is he not a king?"

"No to both. We don't have kings in this part of Midgard. A group of people all come together to make the laws." Clint scratched the back of his head. "The leader approves the laws. If he doesn't, he can send 'em back to the people who made that law, but that usually makes 'em pissed off at him."

"That seems... inefficent," Thor said, still slightly confused.

"It's meant to be, Big Guy," Tony chimed in. "The general idea's that we catch any mistakes before they get written into law. What it really means, though, is that almost nothing ever gets done, and when they do get shit done, no one's paying attention."

"That seems... alarming."

"It should be," Bruce stated.

Thor frowned -- while he would not claim that he had all the answers, such a system would not do well on Asgard -- and turned back to the projection on the wall. "What all does that have to do with these men?" he asked. "Do they write malicious laws? If so, for what reason has no one silenced them?"

"Good question," Steve muttered. He'd gotten tired just watching the back-and-forth, and while he'd have spoken up at some point, when he'd went under, there had only been 21 Amendments to the Constitution, and one of them had been repealed when he was a teenager. Prohibition was still gone, but now there were 27, and he was still trying to catch up. "What do those guys have to do with laws?"

"They scare people," Tony said, clear distaste in his voice. "Sorry, Capsicle. They're a part of the 21st century, should have given you a heads up. They say things like what you heard, scare people into believing threats that don't exist and not paying any attention to the ones that do. They make it easier for the real monsters to do their work, and channels like that do it under the guise of 'news commentary', so that they can't be sued in court when things turn sour."

Steve blinked, and then bit the inside of his mouth, like he'd been hit on the jaw, hard.

"Okay. What can we do to stop them?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update took so long, and also I apologize to anyone still waiting on the Peter fic -- I'll get back to it, I promise! School just ate up all of my attention this term.

**Author's Note:**

> The above fic was inspired and heavily influenced by the comments in this post: http://fishcustardandthecumberbeast.tumblr.com/post/82210098388/elementalsight-babblingbug (not my tumblr, but someone I follow).
> 
> Hi guys! For those who are waiting on me to update my Avengers + Peter fic, Joining the Big Leagues, I will be getting a chapter for that out shortly, but life swallowed me for several months, and I'm just now starting to find time/energy/will to update fics again. If there's a social issue you would like Cap to confront, please leave it below in the comments!


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